In 1859, a geomagnetic storm now called the Carrington Event lit up auroras bright enough to read a newspaper by in the Caribbean, set telegraph offices on fire from Boston to Paris, and let operators send messages after unplugging their batteries because the wires themselves were carrying the current
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On the morning of September 2, 1859, telegraph operators working the line between Boston and Portland, Maine, unplugged their batteries and kept sending anyway. The wire was carrying a current the sky was pushing through it. In Washington, an operator’s forehead was grazed by an arc that leapt from his equipment. Telegraph paper caught fire in Pittsburgh. Accounts gathered afterwards describe a storm that shocked operators and set fires in telegraph offices across two continents.
The storm
The storm
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